The Rules of Using Photos on your Web Site

Imagine going to a web site trying to sell you professional services.  You work in an office. You dress well and take care of personal hygiene. But when you get there, the staff photos are scruffy looking, frowning, mug shots! What’s your buying response like at that point?

A lot of people wonder whether they should even have personal photos on their site. If your pets look better than you do, should you really have personal photos at all? Should you hire a model?

Sites with no personal photos look dead. So yeah, you need photography with actual human beings in it, if you want a response out of the 50% of visitors who are socially motivated. Whether it’s you, clients, or just guys that look good in their Dockers, you need something – and make sure it’s on the landing page, at a minimum.

Most people look decent in decent clothes and with a smile. No need to hire models. I’ve been building business web sites for ages, and I have yet to see someone so hideous that a coat and tie, or some professional attire, and a genuine smile makes a bad photo.

Dress like your clients. Here’s a tip – if you get your hands dirty for a living, but your clients work in an office, put on office attire. The reverse is true too – just ask every politician that speaks at an AFL-CIO rally. If you work in an office and your clients get dirty for a living, ditch the tie and put on a blue collar. Maybe even a hardhat, or hold a clipboard. Dress like your audience.

Use a flat background. Whether you get portraits made, or are just taking staff photos outside your building, get some photos in front of a flat background of only one color. It can be a good idea to get in a skyline or something, but a background that’s too busy distracts from your other graphics and site colors,  like your  logo. And try to avoid shadows! Photos with flat backgrounds and no shadows can be easily photoshopped for various uses, cutting out the background without losing part of your hair.

Get professional portraits. Eventually, you’re going to need these. Your photo is part of your brand. It’ll be your avatar in places where you aren’t using a logo – like maybe Twitter or Facebook. It’ll be your personal motif you add to e-mail newsletters and web sites. Pay a photographer and tell him you don’t want to buy any prints at all. Just the disk, please. Why scan photos in, reducing their quality, when you can start out digital? No one wants print versions for professional work. Go digital, and get it done in the right light, with lots of different poses, so  you can take them home and use different ones for different purposes. Make sure you’re leaving with at least a 2-3 good images that you like on that disk. When people listen to what you say, they are also looking at how you look. If you’re in a hurry and need it tomorrow, CVS and Walgreens do on the spot passport photos. Tell them you want a plain background and maybe an angle shot at your face instead of straight on, to avoid the mugshot look.

Wear the glasses sometimes. If you wear glasses, get photos with and without. And ask professionals in your target audience for their opinion on your final pics. Personally, I don’t like having my glasses on in my photos, but they do make me look smarter and also more approachable. Without them, I’m more like an alley cat. With them, I’m like a well-heeled Russian blue. So, I wear them for pro pics.

Using models isn’t wrong. You may want some professionally licensed model photography for your site. Don’t swipe it off the net, or you’ll regret it later. If you use it, pay for the right licensing first. The plain truth is that about 10% of the population looks better to 90% of the population than 90% of us do to each other.  If you’re looking for people who look truly happy, fit, excited, beautiful, and involved in whatever you’re selling, that’s exactly what models do. And small businesses should take a cue from the big guys in this regard – commercials, corporate sites (often doing many things wrong, they do this part right), product catalogues – these all use models for a reason.

Invite everyone who works with you. The front person needs separate photos, but staff photos are quite effective for marketing and company image, also. Whether your people are employees, contractors, colleagues you share work with, or just a couple of family members who join you part time, and maybe a temp from an agency, invite them to do staff photos for your web site, and individual photos and bios for staff profiles.

Get permission. If you use staff photos, get a release form signed for use of their photo on the internet. And not the old-fashioned model release forms that don’t have clauses for internet use. Get one that’s up to date, with the web in mind. I won’t post mine here, because I’m not a legal expert and not offering legal advice. But if you want a copy, and you’re already a client, feel free to request it. I’ll share it as a “this is what I’m doing” – not as a “here’s what you need”. Consult an attorney – that’s what they’re there for – to keep you from meeting other people’s attorneys.

Resize and crop those darned things! The biggest issue, literally, we see with photos provided by our clients is that they’re the size of a wall. Lower the darned resolution on that camera to the smallest it’ll do. Photos for the web need to be fast-loading. Windows picture viewer fakes it, by showing you the size you expect, but that’s not the real size. Use something like irfanview (and tip the man for using his software – it’s worth it) to see the *real* size. If you’re taking pics at maximum resolution with you’re camera, you’ll probably see an eyeball filling your monitor. Yes, that’s how big it actually is. You can use the same software to resize your existing photos to something reasonable, like 400px width. Even if you *display* the photo at smaller width on your site, it’s loading the entire photo every time someone loads the page, slowing down your site, chewing up  your web space and bandwidth, and all for nought. Don’t waste the net, or your money, or your visitors’ time. Shrink those photos for the web. And crop out the needless backgrounds. If there’s a table edge in one corner, use the same software to crop it. Rule of thumb – show what’s relevant – omit what’s not.

Don’t make your business site a personal home page. A lot of people want to put photos of their cats, their favorite vehicles, or their kids on their business web sites. As someone who does internet marketing, I walk gently here, unless I think the client is open to advice. But my general advice is, unless you’re a micro-business and family or pets or your vehicles are part of your brand, don’t. There’s a difference between a personal home page, which has your favorite songs, colors, etc. and a business site. The former is what Myspace is for. It’s free – use it. Better yet, if you’re in business, use Facebook for that. You’ll get more value. Your business site needs to appeal to the model visitors that constitute your prospect and client demographics. And they’re looking for specific kinds of content. If you don’t know what to put on your site, that’s what an internet marketing consultant is for. We’re happy to help, or there are others out there.

That’s it. Straight, no-nonsense advice on using your photos on your web site. Let us know if you think of something we’ve skipped. We’re always accumulating new ideas and insights as well. Have fun. I can hear those digital cameras clicking away already.